Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell
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3.8 • 6 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson cross the Atlantic at the height of World War I in pursuit of a mysterious coded telegram in this new mystery from the author of The Return of the Pharaoh.
June, 1916. With a world war raging on the continent, exhausted John H. Watson, M.D. is operating on the wounded full-time when his labors are interrupted by a knock on his door, revealing Sherlock Holmes, with a black eye, a missing tooth and a cracked rib. The story he has to tell will set in motion a series of world-changing events in the most consequential case of the detective’s career.
Amid rebellion in Ireland and revolution in Russia, Germany has a secret plan to win the war and Sir William Melville of the British Secret Service dispatches the two aging friends to learn what the scheme is before it can be put into effect. In pursuit of a mysterious coded telegram sent from Berlin to an unknown recipient in Mexico, Holmes and Watson must cross the Atlantic, dodge German U-boats and assassination attempts, and evade the intrigues of young J. Edgar Hoover, while enlisting the help of a beautiful, eccentric Washington socialite as they seek to foil the schemes of Holmes’s nemesis, the escaped German spymaster Von Bork.
Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell plunges Holmes into a world that eerily resembles our own, where entangling alliances, treaties, and human frailty threaten to create another cataclysm.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Holmes and Watson team up to boost England's WWI efforts in screenwriter Meyer's disappointing latest (after The Return of the Pharaoh). In 1916, Watson reunites with Holmes after spending a year treating soldiers who've returned from the front lines. Holmes, meanwhile, has continued working undercover to pump the imprisoned traitor Sir Roger Casement for information about German strategy. Casement tells Holmes that Germany plans to "starve England into surrender" via a prolonged U-boat campaign; he also says that a German foreign minister has a plan to ensure the U.S. doesn't enter the war. A contact at the British secret service dispatches Holmes and Watson to the States to learn more; there, they uncover a plot involving an old nemesis of Holmes's, and get tangled up in a pair of murders. Unfortunately, Meyer doesn't focus on those crimes, opting instead to reframe Holmes as a Jason Bourne–style action hero. Meyer's depiction of an aging, depressed Watson makes more of an impression, but in the end, this is too far-fetched for Holmes devotees and too run-of-the-mill for espionage fans.
